Thursday, December 31, 2009

Adric Anfarm, one of my favorite Second Life filmakers, looks back at 2009. Adric thanks me in this machinima (I like to call them films) for encouragement, and I would like to thank him for allowing me to laugh my ass off whenever I see one of his creations! No one is more insightful.

Many of you readers know that I celebrate celebrity milestone birthdays here, so have a happy 50th one, Val Kilmer. Remeber, AARP discounts start today! Although the sound quality here is poor, here is Val in one of his most memorable roles as Iceman in the epic Tom Cruise classic the well named "Top Gun".

His photography is sexy and clever, and he has a great blog full of Second Life news and other informaiton. It is a must read.

He just started and has only one follower/friend - me. If you like his blog please follow it. There is nothing that cheers a blogger up then to see people appreciating it by putting their mugs in the "follower" box.

Yesterday was a record day for all the blogs that I publish- 980 hits. I have been aiming for 1000 hits in a single day.

Here are how the hits work out according to Statcounter.

Just Beautiful SL Men: 385 (a record - the previsous high ws 282 hits in one day)
Zindra Times: 317
Eddi Haskell's Second Life (this blog): 259
Other blogs I publish: 24

Even though I closed Just Beautiful SL Men down on December 1, it has had a record month with more than 3200 hits. I have decided to continue this blog in 2010 as of today since it is getting more popular.

I have been getting excited all year over the number of hits I have in my blogs- 50,000 here, and another 90,000 in other blogs that I publish with my partner Jago Constantine. But this is only part of the story.

According to Google's Feeburner, which needs to be used by everyone with a serious Blog, 93 people subscribe to this blog around the world. This is not counted in my page hits, subscribers read blogs through a reader. On Saturday, there were an additional 232 hits; you actually do not need to "click" to the website to see the content. So this doubles the number of page hits this blog has had all year.

I did not think 93 sounded like a big number, but it is cool that these many people are interested in following what I am doing and pointing out to read.

It is easy to install Feedburner and get all these great stats if you have a Google account. Go to "my account" and register for free.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

I missed Benu Boyer's - onwer of Impulse with Drew Lubetzki- birthday bash on December 24 but
Prynce Llewellyn from Subversion Menswear did this nice video. I like his eye - he knows how to take nice shots for videos and lets hope he does more.

Having completed our review of our 2009 predictions, we’re back for another round for the coming year.

1. OpenSim will continue or even improve on its growth trajectory – the momentum will continue, although a handful of larger grids are likely to have the lion’s share of that growth, with all the challenges that go along with it.

2. Australia will have its first government funded virtual environment – a proposal is already underway to see this come to fruition. Education will be the focus, but the foresight of the proposal’s facilitators is likely to ensure it involves business, education and government in a collaborative partnership.

3. Closures – it’s not a desirable prediction to make, but unfortunately it’s also a fairly safe one. There’ll be company and/or platform failures. Some may be bought out, but like Metaplace in the past week, there’s going to be some outright shuttering of some environments. I have some specific ones in mind but don’t have the data to support naming them specifically as being on a ‘death watch’.

4. Intellectual property disputes – The Eros vs Linden Lab action is likely to be resolved during 2010 and it will generate a large precedent in regards to virtual goods. Linden Lab will probably defend the action successfully, but the playing field will still have changed considerably.

5. Integration – Whether it be Second Life or Habbo Hotel, the level of integration between virtual environments and social media services will increase. Whether it’s a Facebook Connect sign-in or the ability to Tweet from Second Life, that functionality will move from the plugin / add-on phase to core architecture more commonly.

6. ABC in Second Life – I don’t have any inside knowledge on this, and I really hope I’m proved wrong, but I can’t see the ABC continuing to fund its Second Life presence beyond 2010. For the past year, the majority of the activity on ABC Island has come from its tight-knit community, with support from ABC staff. With the burgeoning ABC Online continuing to grow, there’s always the risk that the Second Life component will be squeezed out. Please, prove us wrong on this one.

7. The mandatory ISP filter – If the legislation passes during 2010, there remains a real possibility of adult content in Second Life and elsewhere falling foul of the filter. There were some gob-smackingly naive acceptances of Linden Lab’s claim they’d heard nothing about being affected by the filter and therefore were not concerned. There’s a chance everything will be fine but given the blacklist isn’t defined, nothing is certain at this stage. Our prediction: Australia-specific verification mechanisms will need to be put in place for Second Life and other environments where content creation occurs.

8. Taxation of virtual goods – 2010 will see the United States further formalise taxation arrangements in regard to virtual goods. I doubt the Australian Tax Office will make any substantive rulings in the coming twelve months.

9. Gaming worlds – 2010 is going to see the largest MMO launch since World of Warcraft:Star Wars The Old Republic. It won’t eclipse the incumbent but it will become the solid number 2 player in the short-term, with all bets off in the longer term. The second half of 2010 also sees the launch of the next World of Warcraft expansion, called Cataclysm. Head-to-head clashes in the MMO industry don’t get much bigger, and it’ll make for some fascinating times.

10. Social games – this year saw social games like Farmville take off in a big way. There’ll be some significant fatigue from users with these platforms, but there’ll also be further innovation to make them more engaging and with easier integration of virtual goods without the spam-like accompaniments that plague people’s Twitter of Facebook timelines. Overall: continuation of exponential growth, albeit not at the same level it has been the past six months.

Our next door neighbors in the adult-content Continent of Zindra are an aptly named retail complex and sex hangout called "Route 69" owned by some very friendly ladies who are nice neighbors of ours, Ale Etzel and Inigo Catteneo.

I was away for a few days- and they have build an amazing complex by expanding south of my gallery, Eddi Haskell Photography and The Museum of Sex Furniture. The place had people walking around all day.

I took some photos of the impressive and well designed complex this evening. It is a good location for a clothing store, sex bed store, gallery - and does not have to be geared toward "adult entertainment". There are regular businesses there. There is also a new Shemale temple, a Jazz Club, Dance Area- it is really nice.

Please contact Ale Etzel or Inigo Catteneo if you want to rent some space at a very competitive price.

Sunday, December 27, 2009

This is the campiest scene I can remember from any Christmas move. The movie is the 1954 Hollywood Classic "White Christmas". Rosemary Clooney (George's auntie) and Vera Ellen are the Hanes Sisters ... performing "Sisters, Sisters". You can imagine the claws coming out of their paws as they sing this.

In the movie, they two ladies need to take off for some reason. To protect their jobs, Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye,who was rumored to be Laurence Olivier's lover, perform their act to a recording - in drag.

Some of you might knowDemoneka Daehlie as a DJ from clubs such as Aussieboys. She is also a great photographer, and combines imagery from real and Second Life in her work. There is an exhibition of her work at the sky gallery at Eddi Haskell Photography. Make sure to take the teleport down to see my current Blue Mars photos in my main gallery.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

A flavicon is a small image, usally 16 x 16 pixels, that appears next to your blogs name. The one that blogger uses is white within an orange square. I just did one today. Mine looks like this, using the University of Michigan's yellow and blue colors. Very simple but easy to see.

The problem with doing this is that Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome all want the see the HTML code for referencing the favicon in different places in your blog code, and Blogger tries to hijack this so the Blogger orange favicon is shown and not yours. I was going to provide instructions on how to do this but I realized people will come to me if it does not work- so I have decided not to!

Still, if you see this on your own browser next to my blog title I guess it worked!

AOne of the best ways to build readership for any blog is to speed up your blog's download time.

This blog was very slow for much of this year. Take a look at this chart below from Google's Webmaster service which offers a historic view of your download speeds.

I do not recommend using webmaster tools unless you know what you are doing since it involves changing the HTML code of your blog. Do this wrong, and you are a blogger-gone nowhere. Google Blogger btw is a very difficult service to tweak if you are not very computer literate.

Anything above 5 seconds for downloading is not bad, its horrible. You should aim for a 3-second download time. This blog was as high as 14 second in early November. My blog today had an under 2.8 second dowlnaod time. . You can use a service like Pingdom to test your speed.

How do you speed up a blog:

1. Limit the number of images per blog page. Make sure they are up in the JPEG format since this offers the lowest file size, and not PNG.

2. Have your archive and formatting set so a large number of blog posts do not run per one page. I am keeping mine at 10.

3. Watch the number of side widgits you have up. some can be very slow.

4. Although hyperlinks are not inherently slow, you will be dinged if you have more than 250 per page by the search services. Use them rationally.

I will be reporting about Google's feedburner service soon, and letting you know why counting total number of "hits" for a blog like this by using a service like statcounter only gives you a partial indication of how many readers you have.

I feel like writing tonight, and for some reason I was to tell you the story of Stinky the border collie. I have no idea how Stinky got her name.

Stinky was my friend Mark's dog in London. She was a gorgeous purebred, with papers and everything. She was as intelligent as can be, and just so sweet. Mark, who just got out of the British army, used to bring her over to visit. I used to look forward to her coming over almost as much as Mark (too much information).

One weekend Mark asked me if I could dogsit her, and I said yes. Mark drops her off, and she she was so bouncy and happy to see me- until I realized she needed to be walked. So I put on her leash, and walked her through Richmond Green. Richmond Upon Thames, in West London, is very snooty to say the least - it is called the Beverly Hills of the U.K. I lived in the only run down apartment block in the area near the train station -the only place I could afford - since it was an 18 minute train ride to work.

As I was walking Stinky, a very well dressed Englishman walks up to us and starts petting her. Here is how the conversation ensued:

I never did this as a kid- sit on Santa's lap in some department store as Mom and Dad pay some photographer 10 bucks to grab a picture for Grandma and Grandpa. But I imagine the conversation would have fone something like this.

Santa: Well ho ho ho little boy! And what is your name?

Eddi. I am Eddi. Santa, why did you not bring Fashion Barbie and bring me GI Joe instead? Hes not even hot. Don't you remember? I asked you for Fashion Barbie last year!

(Mom and Dad look pensively at each other while overhearing little Eddi)

Santa: Well ho ho ho! Fashion Barbie is for a little girl, not a strapping little boy such as yourself! And what would you like for Christmas this year little Eddi?

Eddi: I am going to be 11 in June Santa and I want to have sex with Zac Efron because I am still a virgin. He's so prime! Can you set that up Santa?

There is controversy brewing in Britain! The coveted number 1 spot for best selling Christmas single has now become a culture war.

This song, a cover of The Climb, by cute-as-a-button 18 Year Old Joe McElderry, has apparently nauseated many Brits. It may have to do with the fact that Joe won the X-Factor this year, which is producer Simon Cowell's latest platform for making huge money while insulting his all to eager contestants and irritating the public at large. It should have won the spot for best selling single. It did not, and it is the first time in many years that this happened.

By the way, if you think Joe is cute check out his audition video here. You can see he won due to his vocal talent alone (yeah right, but he does have a great voice). Most of the girls and a good percentage of the guys including Mr. Cowell were eating his toothy grin and eyelashes right up.In a consumer revolt fueled by rapid viral information sharing, US rap metal band Rage Against The Machine's 1992 hit "Killing In The Name", which has lyrics about rebelling against control, beat gorgeous young Joe for the top spot by outselling him 500,000 - 450,000. Facebook was further brought into prominence, since the song was downloaded through their site, and not available through other commercial methods. Something good came out of all this. Over $160,000.00 US (90,000 British Pounds) has been raised for the homeless in the UK since the group donated part of the proceedings to the organization Just Giving.

Fear not for chiseled young Joe. He has taken this all in stride, and actually has now outsold Rage Against the Machine. He is up to 800,000 single sales last time I checked. He just will not get the title for number 1 Christmas single. If anything, this incident has made him even more popular among those of us (myself included) who are a bit mesmerized by him.

Don't expect his wholesome act to last for long. Within six months he will be all buffed out and tanned with a much lower body fat percentage so he can get even more votes for his entry in the 2010 Christmas single - when he sings his cover of Irish Boy Band' Westlife's Flying Without Wings with his shirt off (can't you just see it? I just made it up but it just might happen).

Is he gay? Odds have already been posted on whether or not he will "come out", and there are even bets on who Joe will lose his virginity too, with Simon Cowell up there (I am not joking, they bet on anything in Britain. But why do they think he is a virgin?). It is a bit of a secret over here that the British are way more advanced when it comes to using Web 2.0 e-commerce and social networking, and Joe's loss proves it.

Second Clubber is where I am storing my club photos from 2008 and 2009 for easy access. If you have been to any of these clubs you may find yourself in these photos. If you want to download any of them, please take a look at my Picasa Web Albums.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

I have to admit the main reason I did this video was to put some of my Christmas/Winter photos to Leroy Andreson's famous Sleigh Ride music. Leroy Anderson is relatively unknown, but he has written more recognizable American music then any other composer except for Irving Berlin, the composer of White Christmas.

1. Blue Mars will gain media coverage and awareness during 2010, putting pressure on Second Life to improve overall graphics and visual quality, and improve the customer experience. The launch of the Smithsonian inside Blue Mars will further gain media awareness, ratcheting up the pressure on Linden Labs.

2. The new 512k starter home policy will prove to be a huge success. Premium memberships will grow as existing residents are enticed by the starter homes.

3. Second Life will increasingly offer heavily zoned and content-rich theme areas to residents and businesses, moving away from the "anything goes" building codes that new exist. Covenant restrictions on building will become the norm in many areas.

4. By year-end 2010, 50 of the Global 1000 will have dramatically expanded their presence in Second Life, with collaboration being a key enterprise target.

5. There is a 30% chance of Second Life being acquired by a larger company in 2010. IBM, Microsoft, Sony, Facebook, and Google are all candidates.

6. There will be increasing awareness that Augmented Reality, and not pure Virtual Reality, will be the future for what we now call virtual worlds.

7. Avatar "cross-industry standards" will be experimented with (for example, using your Second Life avatar in Blue Mars) but will never see fruition. Technology providers will refuse to agree on controls.

8. More limits in term of inventory items and perhaps time utilization will be placed on non-premium account holders. Two classes of avatars, paid and free, will increasingly be realized as the norm in Second Life.

9. Adult content businesses will leave Zindra and move to mature rated areas or private estates. The lack of content enforcement by Linden Labs will make an "adult rating" even more of a profit liablity to sex businesses.

10. Lag and rezzing issues will be addressed in future client versions. The average customer experience will improve though 2010, since Second Life realizes it is key to future growth.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

You are looking at my new gallery in Blue Mars. It is the green building right on the main square in Caledon. Desmond Shang, the famous founder of Caledon in Second Life, and now Blue Mars, confirmed that I will be one of the first new merchants in Blue Mars earlier. I will be Eddi Haskell in Blue Mars also (hey its a franchise right? Someone needs to supply the drama!).

This avatar is simply NOT that hot!

I need to figure out how to build and stuff but I will get to that!

And look at this cool email address I just got for myself there: blue.mars@gmx.com

How Long Will it Take for Guys to look like Jago on Blue Mars?

I imagine that once Jago joins Blue Mars there will be an outpost of his Living Color papers and furnishings. The thing is that Jago will not be able to look like Jago unless he figures out how to master the avatar rendering tools quickly. Let's hope he does cause the look of the avatar above is standard for Blue Mars these days. It will be nice to have a Jago Constantine running around Blue Mars don't you think? (BTW Jago has been putting up with this for over a year and he has real patience with me don't you think? He is grimacing right now LOL).

I have been using Mozilla's Firefox browser almost exclusively this year. I have a thing about Internet Explorer, I never use it because I do not want Microsoft controlling my "internet experience". Also, IE has problems with XML chains (noticeable if you always crashes using it).

One thing I have been noticing is that my YouTube transmissions keep on cutting in and out. They stop. I thought it had something to do with my local service.

After checking, this appears to be a problem with Flash/Firefox integration. The last time I checked, it cannot be fixed.

I switched to Google's Chrome browser and the problem went away. Chrome has a very simple interface. Now, Google can dominate my "internet experience" instead of Microsoft! One thing good about Chrome is that it keeps your wasted browser space to a minimum.

Another reason to switch to Chrome is that it is safer. There are fewer hackers trying to break it due to its relatively low market share.

So I am now switching to Chrome. If anyone else has the problem with a fix, please leave a comment.

Calling the creations of Mairan Lean at Blue Pearl "homes and skyboxes" in an understatement.

These creations that I photographed below are magnificently landscaped and furnished.

The Palais de coeur is a fantasy castle that could be described as french/oriental/goth. It is 327 prims and L$ 3560. I loved the landscaping that comes along with it.

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However, what really caught my attention were two "sky orbs". You have to sit on a special red sofa near the SLURL below to be teleported up to around 2000 meters where this beach scene below you just materialzes around you. It has structures with cushions and seats, and Palm trees and water. Very cool

With just a touch of a menu in a hud, your scene can transform itself into this oriental palace below. There is an animated bed. plantings and pools- it is very self contained. Jago and I preferred this one to the beach scene above.

Both skyboxes (a bad term to use to describe these works of art) are about 300 prims each give or take 30 prims. You need to make sure you have enough space for them, a 3000 meter parcel seems to be the minimum size but you need to check. The price for one scene is L$ 2500, for both L$ 4200. It is worth a trip to Blue Pearl to check these things out, and the ride up 2000 meters on the red sofa (it can accommodate 2 avatars) is cool.

The council of Mexico City (population 8.9 million people) approved gay marriage today by a 2-1 margin. Mexico City is now the largest city in the world where one can get married as a gay couple. The bill redefines the definition of marriage, paving the way for same-sex couples to wed as early as February. Leftist mayor Marcelo Ebrard, from the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), now must sign the bill into law, which he is expected to do. This beats a similar move in Buenos Aires which legalized civil unions between gay couples in 2002; gay marriage is expected to be legalized in the next several months after an anticipated postive court ruling.

Washington D.C. fully recognized gay marriage last week.

Where can Gays and Lesbians now get married?

Canada
Spain
South Africa
Netherlands
Belgium
Norway
Sweden

In the United States: (depends on which state you are in, however states do not have to recognize gay marriages if performed in another state, see below).

Israel (For example, you can get married in Canada; you are considered married in Israel if you produce a marriage license)

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in the United States: (you can get married in any of the above states and Washington D.C. and be considered married in these states):

New York

California (past retroactive): On October 12, 2009, Governor Schwarzenegger signed SB 54 allowing same-sex marriages from other states or foreign countries performed on or before November 4, 2008, to be recognized as well.

There are several sims that virtually reproduce Venice on Second Life, and I am not even sure if the sim above is still standing, but I love how St. Marks Cathedral (the building to the left in the background) looked here- with the flags and the blue sky in the background.

tacky: Lacking style or good taste

A tacky story and a parable:

I was planning to go out to a club on Saturday night. I was not sure which one, but one club that I like to go to (I go to many) sent a group IM out that looked promising. A SLURL then appeared in the group IM, and lo and behold I ended up in another club instead! Some people at this other club were laughing at this.

I looked to see what was happening, and a manager at the club I ended up at placed his club's SLURL in the group IM before the owner of the club who actually sent the group IM out had a chance to put the real SLURL in. Now, some people found this amusing. I did not. I think it was unfair and tacky behavior. Club owners put a lot of work in making sure that there is attendance at their clubs, and lose money to allow the rest of us to have a good time. I quickly left for the club that sent the group IM out in the first place, and probably will think twice before I go back to the "tacky" club again. It was the wrong thing to do during Christmas week!

Moral of the story: If you are going to be selfish with group IM's make sure you do not prick yourself with your own tacky behavior!

Monday, December 21, 2009

Jago is traveling and will be heading off until after January 1. I am heading off to New Orleans on Wednesday. We said goodbye yesterday, and it was hard -- I am going to be missing the most incredible person in Second Life for a while, but I think breaks from virtual reality are important. Here we are saying goodbye; parting can be such sweet sorrow!

I will be posting here every day through the end of the year.

Jago and I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Years!

Blue Mars received a major upgrade last week. For one thing, the client is now only about 400 megs and not 1.3 gigs. It does not take forever to install it. The new web page interface (above) was cool too. For another thing, there are some more cool places to visit. Caledon, the Victoriana min-continent continent has also opened up an area on Blue Mars, and I was very keen to see that. I had a major article on Caledon over in VR Style magazine this past July.

I then teleported into Caledon and who should be standing right there but Desmond Shang himself! He is the founder and guvnah of Caledon, one of my favorite places in Second Life. I interviewed Desmond this past July in the Steampunk issue of VR-Style. As soon as I told Desmond that "Roger" my Blue Mars avatar was really Eddi, we began to speak about what was going on.

When you type-chat in Blue Mars (there is no voice yet) these comic-bookish bubble appear above your head. I do not like it much. I take photographs of course (all my work in Blue Mars is done via screen-scraper) and there is no way to eliminate them as of yet. The yellow contraption above is a teleport station, and Desmond was showing me the wilderness area outside of Caledon. I arrived from the site site area in the center of Caledon Green not far from where the teleport station is.

Caledon in Blue Mars was much more realistic looking than its Second Life predecessor. There are stores and shops, and Desmond told me that he was going to reserve a place for my Blue Mars gallery even though he was basically sold out at this point. It reminded me of a New England village, and it felt very green and comfortable. There were flocks of geese flying overhead, which made the skies look realistic.

We also hooked up with Dude Starship, who is a well known Blue Mars blogger. He had given me some pointers before, and it was nice to meet him in person. Desmond took the both of us to outlying areas via the yellow teleport system and the wilderness of Blue Mars was quite impressive. A bridge that reminded me of the Golden Gate linked some of the areas together. All and all, it was a very day in the expanded Blue Mars, and Desmond is on the way to becoming the first multi-planet land baron!